Isabel Wilkerson’s new book “Caste: the origins of Our Discontents” is currently number two on the New York Times Best Seller list. I have no doubt that this book will join other works like White Fragility in the Social Justice canon.
The basic premise of the book is that America is (and always has been) a racially discriminatory caste system.
There are varying opinions on this notion. I would argue that, more than anything, America is a meritocracy where anyone can use their talents and work ethic and achieve goals for bettering their lives and those for their family. But my point with writing isn’t primarily arguing against Wilkerson’s suggestion that America is a caste system.
My biggest concern from the book is the toxic and hopeless ideology Wilkerson spreads. The book offers very little in the way of suggestions to make a better world. It’s 447 pages of beating the drum of how unfair the American system is. She’s profiting greatly off of selling victimhood.
But what’s even worse is that she’s giving people limitations. There are two opposing views. One of them is that this is a country where people can use their talent and work ethic and accomplish goals build the life they desire for themselves and their families. People of all races and backgrounds overcome humble beginnings and circumstances everyday.
Wilkerson’s idea is that a racist system irrevocably locks a person into a caste. The world is setup against you. If you’re from a “lower caste” and succeed, it’s in spite of the caste system (which will be angry that you’ve succeeded because you’ve failed to fall in line with where you’re supposed to be).
There’s a fatalism and existential despair in going through life thinking that the world is setup against you. There’s nothing that is more disempowering that that.
In the opening chapters of the book, Wilkerson compares America to a house with cracks in its foundation. While people living today didn’t build the house, we have to live with it and the faulty foundation. We need to address the structural flaws in the home. But then Wilkerson all but ignores steps which have been taken for more than a century and a half such as the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, constitutional amendments, and other federal laws.
And while she begins the book by saying that we didn’t create the problems that we have today, she later focuses on how Americans from the “upper caste” intentionally enforce this caste system. Wilkerson says: “Like the cast on a broken arm, like the cast in a play, a caste system holds everyone in a fixed place. For this reason, many people – including those we might see as good and kind people – could be casteist, meaning invested in keeping the hierarchy as it is or content to do nothing to change it, but not racist in the classical sense, not active and openly hateful of this or that group.”
In the prologue, the epilogue, and throughout the book, Wilkerson compares the American caste system to Nazi Germany. She mentions Hitler more frequently in the book than she mentions Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Frederick Douglas combined.
One of the most troubling quotes in the book was found on page 268 where she argues that white people – no matter how bad their lives are – can take solace that they’re not minorities: “Those accustomed to being the measure of all that is human come to depend on the reassurance that, while they may have troubles in their lives, at least they are not at the bottom. As long as the designated bottom dwellers remain in their designated place, their own identities and futures are secure.” Wilkerson quotes sociologist Andrew Hacker saying, “No matter how degraded their lives, white people are still allowed to believe that they posses the blood, the genes, the patrimony of superiority. No matter what happens, they can never become ‘black.”
Seriously? Who thinks that way?
She looks at everything in her life, throughout history, and in contemporary American culture through a racial lens. For instance, she has a chapter on Barack Obama and talks of how most white people did not vote for him, and then proceeds to give numerous examples of times when people opposed Obama and chalks them up to racism. There’s never any nuance. There’s no consideration that people might politically disagree with his progressive policies. Throughout the book, she acts like conservatives works to maintain the caste system against liberalism. I’d argue that liberalism is what keeps people in poverty by working against invaluable social structures while major cities are essentially one-party rule and they’re rife with crime and poverty and have criminally bad school systems. No, there’s not a caste, but it’s those policies which keep people poor.
She gives examples from her own life (such as a bad dining experience at a restaurant) as obvious examples of racism. But that’s what much of the book is. Anecdotes and stories rather than hard data to back up her audacious claims.
As I have said, it’s a book that has no message of hope and says very little about reconciliation. The closest the book came to hope was Wilkerson looking forward to 2042 when demographers predict that minorities in America will outnumber caucasians (although she then quickly suggest that the caste will be expanded to include some of these groups in order to maintain the caste system).
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As 2018 comes to a close, I wanted to take a look back at some of the top stories impacting Christianity in 2018.
1. The death of Billy Graham
Arguably the leading figure in American Christianity of the 20th century, evangelist Billy Graham died on February 21 at the age of 99.
In an era when so many churches are rocked by sin and scandal, Billy Graham was respected by both Christians and non-christians for his integrity.
In an era where sexual harassment is rampant in seemingly every sphere of life, Billy Graham vowed to never spend time alone with a woman who was not his wife, mother, or daughter.
In an era where many of our most famous pastors live in mansions, Billy Graham vowed to not live lavishly.
In an era where there is so much hype, Billy Graham didn’t exaggerate attendance figures at his crusades.
In a Gallup poll of the most respected men in the world, Billy Graham made the top 10 a remarkable 50 times (read more).
2. LGBT issues and the church
The third anniversary of the SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage in America came in June. One story that helps illustrate the conflict of the church an the culture is the story of Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who famously refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding. In June, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Phillips.
In August, Phillips was again defending himself after a lawyer sought legal action against Phillips for refusing to bake a cake in honor of the lawyer (who’s transgendered) transition anniversary.
3. Sex abuse scandal in the American Catholic Church
It’s been a rough few months for the Catholic Church in America, largely because of self-inflicted wounds. In July, the New York Times ran a cover story alleging sexual abuse of a Catholic seminarian perpetrated by Theodore McCarrick, a Catholic Cardinal, who had retired as the archbishop of Washington D.C. in 2006. Shortly after the Times story was released, McCarrick resigned as a cardinal. He’s the highest ranking American Catholic to have been accused of abuse. But there were also Catholic leaders who say that they had heard of these allegations and reported them up the chain, prior to the July story.
In August, Carlo Vigano, who had served as the archbishop nuncio to the United States (basically the Vatican ambassador to America) wrote that he had previously reported on McCarrick, as had Vigano’s predecessor. The abuses were swept under the rug.
There were several stories about Vigano this summer. Vigano is a pretty credible person to be making those claims. Vatican gave smoke and mirrors. Pope Francis asked people to pray for the Catholic Church in these “attacks from the devil.”
Chicago archbishop Blasé Cupich brushed off Vigano saying: “The pope knows we have a bigger agenda. We have to speak about the environment, about the poor, we have to reach out to people who are marginalized in society. We cannot be distracted at this moment,”
The hits kept coming.
In August, a Grand Jury Report came out in Pennsylvania, investigating eight of Pennsylvania’ diocese. They found evidence spanning decades of hundreds of priests allegedly sexually assaulting over a thousand children.
When that report was released, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro talked about a “sophisticated cover up,” and claimed they even had evidence that the Vatican was aware of the cover up.
Pennsylvania had been the former stomping grounds of Cardinal Donal Wuerl, who had succeeded McCarrick as the archbishop of Washington D.C. Wuerl had previously been archbishop of Pittsburgh and was one of the names named by Vigano. Wuerl resigned in October.
In November, authorities in Houston raided the offices of Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who’s the archbishop of the Houston-Galveston Catholic Dioceses. Being the archbishop of the fourth largest city in America is pretty significant, but DiNardo is also the President of the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The raid was related to the Houston diocese handling of sexual assault allegations against a local priest named Manuel La Rosa-Lopez.
Next February, the Vatican is hosting a summit on these clerical abuses. This week, Blase Cupich (Mr. Environment) was tapped as one of the organizers for the summit. I was immediately skeptical of this selection. In addition to talking about how the Pope had to focus on the environment (something he doesn’t’ control) rather than being troubled with an imploding sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church (something he does control), said they weren’t “going to go down a rabbit hole” on Vigano’s credible allegations.
It all seems reactionary and slow to come. And my concern is that it still won’t fix the problems. People can try to dismiss these issues as being things that happened a long time ago, but when many of the higher ups within the church are being shown to have had knowledge (or in McCarrick’s case, to be the perpetrator), it remains a major crisis (read more).
4. American pastor freed by Turkish government
Facebook
October 12
The Turkish government released American pastor Andrew Brunson after more than two years in custody.
Brunson was arrested in the aftermath of a failed coup on the Turkish government and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Brunson had nothing to do with the coup. At the time, he had been in the country for over 20 years serving as a pastor and was taken as a political prisoner.
There had been several times over the past year where Brunson’s release seemed possible, but the Turkish government and courts were resistant. In July, Brunson was allowed to go on house arrest (read more).
5. American missionary murdered on remote island
November 17
An American missionary, John Allen Chau lost his life on a remote island off the coast of India last week.
His goal was to share the gospel with the Sentinelese tribe. Their island is a protected area, which is isolated from the outside world. The tribe has also been violent towards visitors in the past.
Chau attempted going to the island and the Sentinelese shot arrows at him, forcing Chau to flee. But he returned again, tragically losing his life (read more).
6. Willow Creek sexual misconduct and fallout
A long investigative story from the Chicago Tribune reports on several allegations of moral filings from Bill Hybels, the founding pastor of Willow Creek, a suburban Chicago church which is one of the largest churches in America (read more).
The article says:
The alleged behavior included suggestive comments, extended hugs, an unwanted kiss, and invitations to hotel rooms. It also included an allegation of a prolonged consensual affair with a married woman who later said her claim about the affair was not true, the Tribune found.
More fallout continued into the summer. A New York Times story in August included further allegations. Willow Creek teaching pastor Steve Carter resigned.
The leadership of Willow had been informed about these allegations four years ago and did very little to take them seriously. They did an internal investigation, but internal investigations can be hard when their is an internally vested interest in clearing someone of wrongdoing.
Two days later, on August 9, Willow Creek’s other lead pastor and elder board resigned.
Willow Creek was not the only church to have sexual assault issues come to light. In the continuing fallout of the #metoo movement, a separate move started within the church called #churchtoo.
7. Megachurch pastor takes his own life
Andrew Stoecklein was pastor of Inland Hills Church in Chino, California. Stoecklein had struggled with depression and had taken leave from the church this summer (read more).
8. Survey reveals pervasive heretical beliefs in the American Church
Working with Lifeway Research, Ligonier Ministries recently released the third installment of their “State of Theology” survey.
Part of the goal is to find out what American Chrstians “believe about God, salvation, ethics, and the Bible.” Lifeway polled 3,000 Americans in the survey.
The results were troubling.
Many people in the poll have unbiblical views on moral issues. For instance, 46% of people ages 18-34 believe that gender is a matter of personal choice. 38% disagreed that abortion is a sin.
But what is even more concerning than views on moral issues is views which are heretical. For the question, “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” 78% agreed with that statement.
Other key doctrines where people disagreed with Biblical teachings included undermining that humans have a sinful nature. 53% of respondents agreed with the statement “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.”
51% of respondents believed that a person can be saved who follows a religion besides Christianity. 58% believed that “worshipping alone or with one’s family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church” (read more).
9. Beth Moore calls out misogyny within Evangelical Christianity
Over the last generation, Beth Moore has been one of the most prominent female leaders and speakers in American Evangelical circles. Her Bible studies are hugely popular among women. She’s the founder of Living Proof Ministries, a ministry for women based out of Houston.
She’s not a pastor. She’s an author and speaker.
Although she’s popular in Evangelical circles, she’s not universally supported. Some of the criticisms of her theology include that it’s a prosperity gospel or that it’s intellectually light theology.
In writing, Moore talks about some of the misogynistic treatment she’s received over the years. Considering the divergent opinions within Christian circles on women in leadership, Moore’s letter talks about how she had chalked up some of her treatment as being a byproduct of deeply rooted Biblical convictions among sincere Christians with whom she simply disagreed.
From the letter:
I accepted the peculiarities accompanying female leadership in a conservative Christian world because I chose to believe that, whether or not some of the actions and attitudes seemed godly to me, they were rooted in deep convictions based on passages from 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14.
As Moore continues to elaborate, she talks of coming to a realization that it wasn’t simply about differences in opinion.
I came face to face with one of the most demoralizing realizations of my adult life: Scripture was not the reason for the colossal disregard and disrespect of women among many of these men. It was only the excuse. Sin was the reason. Ungodliness.
Our culture largely disrespects women. The #metoo movement showed the rampant sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood. As the movement spread, more and more areas of life came to light that were stained by the mistreatment of women. The #churchtoo movement showed further examples of assault and harassment from within the church. Obviously we knew that there were issues but these movements have created a national dialogue.
While Moore’s post dealt more with misogyny than sexual assault, both are a reflection of a culture which far too often devalues women.
10. Death of Eugene Peterson
October 22
Eugene Peterson, pastor, professor, and writer passed away today at the age of 85 after battling dementia and heart failure.
Peterson authored 35 books in his lifetime. The most popular among them was The Message, which has sold over 20 million copies. The Message is a paraphrase translation which attempts to capture the idea of a Biblical verse and not necessarily the exact wording (read more).
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe!
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
It’s crazy that one of the most popular books on dating written in the 90s was the dating philosophy of a 21 year old man…who was single at the time! In 1997, Joshua Harris wrote his dating manifesto “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” where he talked about…kissing dating goodbye. Instead of casual dating and having lots of relationships, Harris favored courtship, intentionality, rules and boundaries.
It was a popular book.
This philosophy continues to influence people. While Harris didn’t invent these ideas, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” exposed many to these approaches and rules.
This week, the pastor and writer announced that he is working with his publisher to discontinue the book:
In light of the flaws I now see in I Kissed Dating Goodbye, I think it’s best to discontinue its publication, as well other supplemental resources tied to it (this includes the two books I wrote after it whose content is similar).
In a 2016 interview with NPR, Harris acknowledged his consideration of the results espoused in IKDG: “I think it’s taken time for the consequences of the way that people applied the book and the way the book affected people to play out. And so I’m hearing these different voices saying, here’s how your book was used against me, here’s how it was forced on me, or here’s how I tried to – no one forced it on me, but I tried to apply it and it had this negative consequence in different ways. I’m trying to go back and really evaluate, you know, where did my book contribute to that? Where was it too stringent? And where was that me and what I was writing, and where was that – the families and the church cultures and so on?”
Thoughts
I was never a huge fan of this book. It’s not that everything in it was bad. For instance, of course it’s good to have intentionality in relationships. But Harris’s philosophy wasn’t just conservative on physical intimacy before marriage but also on emotional intimacy.
In wanting people to not get overly emotionally committed before marriage, it risked a person getting too relationally committed to soon to people they knew too little.
Some took Harris’s philosophy as gospel when it came to relationships. Harris argued against a culture where people hopped from one dating relationship to another to another. There needed to be more intentionality in dating. It was a courtship model where relationships were only entered into with people you could seriously see yourself marrying and where activities were largely based on building friendship.
I think these ideas continue to reverberate through American Christian culture. While Harris warned against casual dating, hyper-intentional dating can put tremendous pressure on a couple from the outset of a pursuit. I think in Evangelical Christian circles, when two people do start dating, there can be this tendency to think “well they’re going to get married.”
But there might be some serious reasons as to why those people are not a good fit. Dating without emotional connection (which Harris was weary of) can lead to superficial relationships.
I think that millennial Christians tried to navigate relationships while a “hook up culture” existed for much of the rest of this generation. And while many might not have taken dating and relationships seriously enough, I think Evangelicals pushed too far in taking dating to an opposite extreme which could be just as unhealthy, and where even the beginning of a relationship was taken with extreme seriousness.
There is still be an “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” approach within Christian circles where courtship is seen as being inherently better and more God-honoring than dating. This is absurd, because neither dating nor courtship is the common method in the Bible of finding love.
Some young Christians brought a formulaic approach to relationships and marriage. Almost like good things would happen for avoiding certain pitfalls of dating and relationships.
This approach can lead to legalism and false hope that “if you follow the rules, you’ll have a fulfilling marriage.”
In his statement this week, Joshua Harris touches on this idea that many took from his book: “The book also gave some the impression that a certain methodology of relationships would deliver a happy ever-after ending—a great marriage, a great sex life—even though this is not promised by scripture.”
Dating should be taken seriously. But in our society, it does need to be taken casually enough to where a person doesn’t feel prematurely committed to someone who they’re just getting to know. And this isn’t just a critique of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” because there are other books from the same late 90s, early 2000s period which espouse similar philosophies.
I think it’s worth appreciating the humility of Harris. He obviously took a long look at his book and its impact. It’s a book that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and put Harris on the map. For him to look at his own work and say it should be discontinued and to recommend other books, I think that take a big person.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe!
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
This week, as we remember the 17th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, I watched a new documentary on the history channel titled: “9/11: Escape from the Towers.” The documentary features firsthand accounts of people who were working in the Twin Towers that day.
The stories are astounding. Aside from “9/11,” a documentary by two French filmmakers who happened to be with NYFD Engine 7 on the morning of 9/11, and which I consider to be the best documentary made regarding that day, “Escape from the Towers” is probably second. This documentary so vividly captures the human spirit and gives perspective on what matters in life.
Spoiler alerts
Two of the survivors are Michael Benfante and John Cerqueira were on the 81st floor of the North Tower, just below the impact zone of where American Airlines flight 11 struck.
As they were making their way out, they encountered a disabled woman in a wheelchair. Her normal chair was going to be too heavy and difficult to bring down the stairs. They found a special wheelchair for evacuations and helped the woman (whom they had never met) get down 68 flights of stairs and out of the building.
They could have kept going. They didn’t. When they came to the 21st floor, there had been a triage unit setup. They could have dropped her off there. They didn’t.
Jyoti Vyas was working on the 77th floor of the South Tower. She was 7 months pregnant on September 11. The documentary spends a lot of time focusing on Vyas and her coworkers and their efforts to help her (and her unborn baby) safely evacuate the building. Once again, the story is inspiring as you consider the selflessness, camaraderie, and love that coworkers had for her. Now forever a family in a shared bond of tragedy they experienced that day. I consider all of those coworkers to be heroes. They could have had an “every man for himself” mentality. They didn’t. They could have been more concerned for getting out to see their own families. They weren’t.
In the documentary, one of them talks of how all of them were getting out or none of them were getting out.
9/11 was a day where we saw the worst of humanity and true evil with what those highjacks did. But part of the reason why I watch documentaries is because they’re also inspirational snapshots of the good things which people are also capable of doing to help others out.
They all bare the emotional scars. Many of them got emotional talking about the day, talking about the aftermath and the emotional trauma of that day, talking about the flashbacks that they’ll never be able to escape. There’s the survivor’s guilt and the harrowing experience of being a firsthand witness to so much loss of life.
There are undoubtedly many more stories of heroism and selflessness from that day, stories of risking one’s own life to help another, stories of coworkers sticking together. Unfortunately many of those stories didn’t end happily.
In the documentary, they talk of the firefighters passing them on the stairs, trying to keep everyone calm as they trudged upward.
I think the documentary was also a sobering reminder of the importance of appreciating the people we have. Throughout much of the documentary, there are interviews from Dale Koster, who’s wife Anne worked on the 81st floor of the North Tower. Anne suffered from asthma. Her husband chronicles the helpless feeling of watching these events unfold live, knowing how far up she was and some of her health complications. When the tower collapsed, he knew she had perished.
As a twist in the documentary, we find out that Anne had actually survived. I think that this was an important piece of filmmaking because it invited you into one person’s agony and aguish as he worried about a loved one. Something felt by thousands of relatives that day. Dale and Anne talk of their appreciation for each other and their closeness since the attacks.
It’s sad as I consider the small things people argue over, the things friendships end over, the things that cause strain in families. There are precious people in our lives (also, the Koster’s seemed like they had had a very good marriage before 9/11, I’m just commenting on what I was thinking during the film). We never know when someone will be taken from us.
It’s important to appreciate and cherish the people in our lives.
I loved this documentary. I can’t say enough good things about it. Certainly it’s shrouded in tragedy but I also think that when we see the service of people to others, that we should all be inspired to live selfless lives.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe!
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
I was born in Vietnam, but I was not Vietnamese; I was raised in America, but I was not American. I grew up Asian in character but American in culture, a citizen but always refugee. I had no lessons from the past to guide me, no right way to do things in the present, and no path to follow me in the future.
-Where the Wind Leads
Labor Day weekend is upon us, the unofficial end to the summer.
Chung came to America as a child from Vietnam. I won’t give any spoilers about the book (Vinh survives the journey to America….obviously…he did write the book).
The book is basically in three parts, each was fascinating in its own right. The first third (roughly a third) of the book talked about his family in Vietnam, his larger-than-life grandmother and the tremendous struggles (and tremendous successes) that his family had faced in Vietnam. They had nothing, had it all, and then had nothing.
The second third of the book deals with things getting worse in Vietnam during the years of war and Vinh’s family leaving Vietnam. He recounts their journey out of Vietnam and the harrowing experience that it was to ultimately be saved. This section could be a movie. It was that compelling.
The last portion of the book (at this point, I honestly thought the story would be anti-climactic. The action was over). But I honestly enjoyed the last section just as much as the rest of the book. He talks of being a refugee in America, learning a totally new culture. It was inserting to see Chung’s perspective as someone who came to America as a child. A Vietnamese family who was still very traditional but living life in America. There’s a lot more I could say but I don’t want to give spoilers.
It’s a book that shows the providence of God, the love of family, and the value of hard work. Amazing book. One of those books that you wish wasn’t done because it’s so good.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe!
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
